This blog is dedicated to the many many Europeans who, despite continuous disinformation campaigns, do not believe the worst of the Jews (malign and secret Jewish power); who do not disguise anti-Semitism behind the language of anti-Zionism; and who know that Israel embodies the best in democracy.

Monday, 18 March 2013

European Parliament calls for investigation into death of Palestinian prisoner in Israel

BRUSSELS (EJP)---The European Parliament said it is “extremely concerned” at the death in February of a Palestinian prisoner, Arafat Jaradat, in an Israeli prison and at the renewed tensions in the West Bank following his death.

Jaradat, 30, died of an apparent heart attack while in Israel’s Megiddo prison in February. He had been arrested a week earlier on suspicion of being involved in a rock-throwing attack that injured an Israeli.
An autopsy report by the Israeli authorities stated that there was “no evidence” of physical violence against him.
A resolution, initiated by Belgian Socialist MEP Veronique De Keyser and adopted Thursday at the parliament’s plenary session in Strasbourg, calls on the Israeli authorities “to open independent, impartial and transparent investigations into the circumstances of Jaradat’s death” and raises concerns about the Palestinians held in administrative detention “without charge” .

Saturday, 16 March 2013

"European diplomats helped draft the unilateral Palestinian statehood bid at the UN in November and they also helped to push it through. Now they want to isolate Israel further by recycling some of the most vicious accusations against Israel from the Arab league."

An internal report issued by EU countries consuls general in Jerusalem and Ramallah has called upon the EU member states to prevent financial transactions, including foreign direct investments from within the EU, in support of settlement activities, infrastructure and services.

Reading through the one-sided report leaves one with a Kafkaesque sense of reality. It is a bit like sitting through a one day UN Human Rights Council session in Geneva discussing only Israeli human rights violations. The discussion leaves out – per definition – any mentioning of Palestinian violations. When the question is raised, from time to time, why this is the case the answer is simple. The agenda item is about Israel, not about the Palestinians. This can be understood – though never accepted – in an international forum where human rights standards are defined by some of the cruelest authoritarian regimes in the world.

But Brussels is not Geneva. The European Union is said to be a community of values. These values, however, are shared today by only one country in the Middle East, namely Israel. How can it then be that the EU is constantly putting all the blame for the failed Middle East peace process on the Jewish state? Perhaps the values have disappeared and have been replaced with something else? Did anyone say "petro dollars"?

The recent diplomatic report is nothing but a verbal onslaught against the Israeli government and in particular those living in the disputed territories. It suggests that "individual member states should consider denying entry to known settler activists". It also calls for "guidelines on retail labels for settler made products, such as wine or cosmetics, in order to guarantee consumers’ right to an informed choice". A rather sophisticated way of echoing the Nazi call, "kauf nicht bei Juden" (don’t buy from Jews).
In one of the most mindboggling parts of the report, the diplomats are openly complaining that archeological sites are being dug up which creates a "partisan historical narrative of Jerusalem, placing emphasis on biblical and Jewish connotations of the area, while neglecting Christian and Muslim ties". What exactly does the report mean by "partisan historical narrative"? Are the authors perhaps suggesting, like Mahmoud Abbas, that there was never a Jewish temple in Jerusalem and that all Jews in Jerusalem are trespassers who will eventually have to be evacuated once Jerusalem has been proclaimed the capital of a Palestinian state? The report does not say, it only insinuates.

Friday, 15 March 2013

The imperiled condition of French Jewry, at this point, is pretty well-trod territory. That said, one’s shock at a statistic like the 58 percent rise in anti-Semitic attacks in France last year, may not diminish.

A few weeks ago, an article chronicled the growth of a French Jewish community in the United Kingdom. To accommodate the influx, St. John’s Wood Synagogue in London started hosting French-language Shabbat services. Here’s one about the French Jews arriving in Israel at a rate of 2,000 per year.

Earlier this week, La Stamparevealed a similar expansion of French Jews in the Upper West Side of New York.

To understand what’s happening, we have to go to the Jewish Centre on 86th Street where, in March 2012, the Jewish New Yorkers urged their French counterparts to commemorate the victims of the shooting in the “Ozar Hatorah” school in Toulouse, where the jihadist Mohammed Merah killed a rabbi and three children.

Leading the ceremony was Zachary, 29, a transport manager from Strasbourg. “If New York is full of French Jews- he explains- it’s because in 2002, in connection with the second Palestinian Intifada, a season of physical aggression began towards us from the Arabs that still hasn’t stopped. It just brought the conflict from the Middle East onto our streets.”

From the sounds of it, the ferment of French Jewry’s plight has been a full decade in coming and not just a few years as it’s been assumed. It’s stunning to remember the way that former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon–at the height of the Second Intifada no less–infamously instructed French Jews to move to Israel for their own safety. His remarks were blasted by French leaders–both Jewish and not–including the French foreign ministry, who called on Sharon for an explanation of his “unacceptable comments.”

It’s manifested itself not just in terrorist attacks, arson, assaults, or acts like the planting of a fake bomb near the Hillel Center in Lyon earlier this week, but in language as well. For each incident of anti-Semitic graffiti, consider several thousand or more digital analogues. Writing in Tablet today, Jillian Scheinfeldoutlined an actual, popular trend of anti-Semitic hate speech on Twitter.

Last October, when the hashtag #UnBonJuif reached the top three on Twitter’s trending topics list in France, a French Jewish student group, the Union of French Jewish Students, complained directly to the San Francisco-based social networking giant asking for the names of Twitter users promoting the anti-Semitic hashtag. When Twitter failed to respond, the students took their case to a French court—and won.

A court order may ultimately impel Twitter to police its users more thoroughly, but even if that accomplishment is managed, there’s still a whole world offline and in the dark.

Wednesday, 13 March 2013

During a session at the Brussels regional parliament on March 8, MP Alain Destexhe called for action following the use of an anti-Semitic cartoon by a cultural and educational association affiliated to the Socialist party on a invitation to a conference about Zionism to be held in Brussels. His criticism drew furious reactions from other Socialist MPs.

MP Jacques Brotchi, who is a retired eminent professor of neurosurgery, wrote on his Facebook account that the outburst of hatred was a deeply traumatizing experience for him. He had to leave because he couldn't bear the shouting and the abuse from socialist MPs against Mr Destexhe who had had the courage to tell the truth.
"In a democratic society, where the rule of law prevails, such behaviour is unacceptable and intolerable. I was deeply shocked by what I experienced this afternoon at the Brussels Parliament", he wrote.

Mr Destexhe reported on his blog that a member of staff at the Parliament, who is not Jewish (Mr Destexhe is not Jewish either), had told him that he was walking in Brussels recently. It was a rainy day and he was wearing a large overcoat and a hat. A group of "youth" ("youth" means in polite language young Arab men) shouted at him "Fuck Israel" and "stinking Jew"... Here in French.

Tuesday, 12 March 2013

The French seem to have laws against incitement and even against Holocaust denial (Gayssot law). Yet France produces lots of antisemitic material - with total impunity as the case of cartoonist Zeon shows. As many Europeans he is obsessed with Jews and the United States. These images come from Zéon's blog.

Isn't this Holocaust-denying?

Photoshopping (above).

This cartoon comes with the following invitation: spread this image widely.

Sunday, 10 March 2013

"We sinners of the past are called to become the allies of the future and stand faithfully by our Jewish friends.""Holocaust was only possible because the church did not understand its Jewish roots. [...] Church unity can only be established when we understand and appreciate these Jewish roots." Archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn

French newspaper Le Figaroreports that the Archbishop of Vienna Christoph Schönborn, is a serious papal contender. He is a friend of Israel and the Jewish people.

Jerusalem, Israel -- A Roman Catholic Cardinal says European Christians' support for Israel is not based on Holocaust guilt and Christians should affirm Zionism as biblical.

Archbishop of Vienna Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, part of a visiting Austrian delegation, made the remarks in an address at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on the topic of "God's chosen land."
After asking, "What does Eretz Yisrael [the Land of Israel] mean to us," Schoenborn answered by stressing the doctrinal importance to Christians of not only recognizing Jews' connection to the land, but also ensuring that Christian identification with the Jewish Bible not lead to a "usurpation" of Jewish uniqueness.
"Only once in human history did God take a country as an inheritance and give it to His chosen people," Schoenborn said, adding that Pope John Paul II had himself declared the biblical commandment for Jews to live in Israel an everlasting covenant that remained valid today.

Christians, Schoenborn said, should rejoice in the return of Jews to the Holy Land as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy.

A Palestinian priest challenged the cardinal on that point, asking how he could preach to his Palestinian congregation that the establishment of the modern Jewish state was not a "catastrophe," as they called it, or the result of European powers' guilty conscience following World War II.
Schoenborn responded by saying that "I am myself a refugee" – at the end of World War II, when he was an infant, Schoenborn's parents fled to Austria from Czechoslovakia – and that he felt pained at the unrecognized injustice that thousands of Czechs had suffered. However, he said, both that case and the Arab-Israeli conflict were matters of international law, whereas the chosenness of the Jewish people and their inheritance in the Holy Land were matters of faith that date back to the Bible itself.
Schoenborn also said he hoped the conflict here would be resolved in accordance with international law, and with respect to justice for the Palestinian people. "We are all longing for that solution," he said. "Yet I am not naive. Conflicts are part of [both sides'] love of the land, and always have been... There is no simple solution."

Saturday, 9 March 2013

Leading Nazi Hermann Göring was instrumental to Hitler's reign of terror, but research suggests his brother Albert saved the lives of dozens of Jews. Israel must now decide whether he deserves to be honored as one of the "Righteous Among the Nations." [...]

But why did Albert Göring help those in need in the first place? There are no written documents describing his motivation for helping people in trouble. It is clear that the Hitler cult of personality was repugnant to him. His brother was the antipode, and his two sisters were married to ardent Nazis.

Albert was the exception in the family, an outsider who was respected and derided at the same time. There is, however, a story in his biography that lends a grotesque twist to this case of the unsung hero.
According to a relative who prefers to remain anonymous, it was an open secret in the family that Albert was in fact only a half-brother. He was allegedly the product of an affair between his mother, Franziska, or Fanny, and the Göring family's wealthy physician. In fact, photos show a resemblance between Albert and the doctor, Hermann von Epenstein. Epenstein was rich and sophisticated, and he owned two castles, one in the Franconia region of Bavaria and one in the Austrian state of Salzburg. He was also of Jewish origin. If Epenstein was the father, Albert Göring, according to Nazi Rassenlehre (racial theory), was a "Jewish mongrel."
Some might interpret this aspect of the family history as a motive for Albert Göring to rescue victims of the Nazis instead of becoming a Nazi himself or leading a life of luxury in his brother's shadow.

His life in Third Reich was certainly not without danger because it was possible to exploit the knowledge of his origins. But the Gestapo apparently did not discover the family secret, or else it would have caused more trouble for both Albert and Hermann Göring.

Belgian Israel-basher Pierre Galand, a much respected (and this is surreal, also highly regarded by Belgian francophone Jewish leaders) and highly influencial socialist politician and 'humanist', has called for the boycott of Shimon Peres and accused him of being a "war criminal" who behind the façade of a "man of peace" is the representative of a "criminal State". On a previous occasion Mr Galand said that Israel was a rogue State. He also suggested that Yithzak Rabin was a war criminal. On the occasion of Peres' visit to Belgium, one of the anti-Israel associations he chairs (one of them is BDS) released a statement: "His dovish image serves to obscure the real face of this Israeli politician. Since 2007 as President of the State of Israel, he has used his positive image to help tone down the international negative reactions to the policies of the Israeli governments who lean more and more to the right".
Pierre Galand also summoned "criminal" Shimon Peres to the last session of the Belgian kangaroo court he created (Russell Tribunal on Palestine) to be held next week in Brussels and to free Marwan Barghouti,hinting at Israel-apartheid.
More on Mr Peres visit to Belgium: Belgian Jewish leaders invite head of anti-Israel university to debate with Shimon Peres.

Thursday, 7 March 2013

Belgian Jewish leaders invited the head of the Free University of Brussels to a debate which, unsurprisingly, turned out to be a disastrous "blame-Shimon-Peres-and-Israel-game". The audience was shocked by the violence of the charge. President Peres who was scheduled to answer questions, but left immediately after answering Mr Vivier's accusations. There are people in Belgium who hold positive views on Israel but they are ignored, why do Belgian Jewish leaders turn to Israel-bashers? Yet again, the debate was not about Israel. The debate was about the Israel-Arab conflict and the badness of Israel. The Free University of Brussels is a hotbed of anti-Israel sentiment and honestly the Rector who wascriticised for accepting the invitation to meet Peres had to be shown to be more than critical of Israel. The Russell Tribunal on Palestine was created by Pierre Galand and others from the ULB who called Shimon Peres a "war criminal" ("behind his facade of a man of peace he is a war criminal" and the "representative of a criminal State"). M. Peres praised the United States and President Obama. Well done Mr. Peres and sorry for the affront.

Speaking on Tuesday at an event hosted by the umbrella representative groups of the Belgian Jewish community, the president Shimon Peres responded to "concerns" about the Israeli government’s policy expressed by the rector of the Brussels Free University (ULB), Didier Viviers, who was invited to debate with the Israeli leader in presence of ambassadors, academics, politicians and members of the Jewish community.

Viviers’s presence at the event had been sharply criticized by several fellow professors as well as by pro-Palestinian and extreme left pro-boycott activists who staged a demonstration in front of the Palais des Academies where the event took place.
"I accepted the invitation to discuss with the president and to ask him a few questions as part of our freedom of speech," he said.
"My university, Mister President, is concerned about violations of international law. The colonisation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem is illegal and violates the Geneva Convention," the rector told Peres.
He also questioned the president's personal position on the issue and what he called the "double discourse." "While you are in favor of negotiations with the Palestinians on the issue, colonisation, which is the main obstacle, continues, even in East Jerusalem, a policy which is condemned by the Europeans," he said, before bluntly asking : "Mr President dont’you feel that you are used by Netanyahu and Lieberman."

In his lenghty response, Peres recalled that the Arabs rejected the partition plan of Palestine in 1947 into a Jewish and an Arab state. "The Arabs rejected it while we accepted."
"Israel was attacked seven times, went through seven wars not only with the Palestinians but also with Arab countries." "We made peace with Egypt and Jordan and we gave back all land and water, and though people still criticze us.," he said.
Recalling the time when he had to replace Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin after he was assassinated in 1995, Peres stressed that Palestinian terror followed began with several bloody bus bombings.
"But we later started a peace process with the Palestinians, we helped buit their economy, their security. We agreed to give back the Gaza Israeli settlements completely. Instead of creating a state, Hamas, a terror group, took control of Gaza."
" We have to complete our negotiations with the Palestinians but Hamas, which controls Gaza, doesn’t want to negotiate while the PLO under President Abbas in the West Bank doesn’t have control over the whole situation." [...]

Wednesday, 6 March 2013

Europeans have been fed this type of desinformation on Israel for decades and against the Jews for centuries. These people seem furious that the wider public either does not believe them or doesn't care, hence their obsessive exercice of repeating and repeating the same accusations.

Oh my, we can only hope the priest is capable of critical reading and thinking, as the Jewish participation Shatila incident he refers to in the text is a figment of the mentioned Palestinian’s fantasy… Also, if truly the policies against Palestinians is so cruel, so destructive, then how come the number of Palestinians is steadily growing? A mathematical mystery… More mysterious still, any mention of numerous attacks against Jews is plainly absent. It perhaps clutters the bigger picture the priest wants to paint? Palestinians are victims and Jews are monsters?

Many go to Israel today to see the biblical sites. Following in the tracks of Jesus is exciting. However, tourists do not experience the systematically and brutal illegal behavior against the Palestinian population.
One morning, they came, two bulldozers, 10 trucks and 40 soldiers, razing his home. All furniture was carried to the outside; the building was leveled with the ground. [...]

Meanwhile a representative of the “Jew police” in USA travels to Malmö in order to investigate whether the Mayor has used anti-Semite terminology. But the “American Jew police” have no interest in the Jewish anti-Semitism in Israel. Billions of dollars are being transferred in support of brutal crimes and occupation. Without this support the Jews could not possibly have been building in the West Bank.
Who is a Semite? To the Semite language groups, both Arab and Jewish peoples belong. Very many Palestinians are also of Jewish descent. They descend from the first Christian congregations in Israel (by the 7th century, all of the Middle East was Christian).
Having this context in mind, Israel is perhaps the most anti-Semite country in the world. More mosques and churches are demolished in Israel than there are synagogues destroyed in Europe.
But when Israel-Jews destroy the religious buildings in Israel they are referred to as hoodlums. When synagogues are destroyed in Europe, it is referred to as hatred of Jews. But both are anti-Semite!
The old fashioned hatred of Jews disappeared post WW2. And well is that: But a new hatred of Jews has arrived because of the brutal Jewish suppression of the Palestinians.

“I hate Jews”, a Palestinian–Scandinavian working in Norway said. “No, I hate Jewish politicians”, he corrected himself. He tells me: “We lived in the Shatila refugee camp in Beirut. One day we were surrounded by Israeli Jews. Their henchmen were sent into the camps. They raped the women, killed men, women and children in a ‘Jewish mini-Holocaust’ The Israeli Jews watched that no one got away. More than 1000 innocents were killed on that day. I lost all of my family”.
No Israelis ever were held responsible over this brutal crime against the Palestinians.
Are Norwegian Jews to blame over Israeli crimes against the Palestinians in Israel? Absolutely not. But the “Jewish collective” in the world, is through its statements and its political and economic support to Israel strongly implicated in the brutal anti-Semitism towards the Palestinians seen in Israel. Here in lies the cause of the new hatred of the Jews. In particular, the American Jews and their followers are strongly implicated. More HERE.

On the Sabra and Shatila massacre read HERE. Of special note is this: "By contrast, few voices were raised in May 1985, when Muslim militiamen attacked the Shatila and Burj-el Barajneh Palestinian refugee camps. According to UN officials, 635 were killed and 2,500 wounded. During a two-year battle between the Syrian-backed Shiite Amal militia and the PLO, more than 2,000 people, including many civilians, were reportedly killed. No outcry was directed at the PLO or the Syrians and their allies over the slaughter. International reaction was also muted in October 1990 when Syrian forces overran Christian-controlled areas of Lebanon. In the eight-hour clash, 700 Christians were killed—the worst single battle of Lebanon’s Civil War. 10 These killings came on top of an estimated 95,000 deaths that had occurred during the civil war in Lebanon from 1975–1982."

Tuesday, 5 March 2013

An anti-Semitic and holocaust-denying cartoon featured on posters for a conference in Brussels - in an area, Molenbeek, densely populated by Muslims - organised by the local section of the Socialist party. The conference was cancelled. The theme was "Let's talk calmly about Zionism"... You couldn't make it up, could you?

Monday, 4 March 2013

Times of Israel: "Twelve experts of varying religions and homelands urged the US Congress to speak out against hate speech and anti-Semitism throughout the world, notably Europe. The human rights subcommittee of the US House Foreign Affairs Committee held a two-hour hearing on Wednesday in which experts testified that anti-Semitism is resurgent, particularly in Europe."

It is indeed odd that David Meyer, a French rabbi who lives in Belgium and who is a relentless and harsh critic of Israel who advocates a bi-national State was invited as an "expert" on anti-Semitism to the United States Congress. Rabbi Meyer is more known for his criticism of Israel on the European media than for his fight against anti-Semitism. Pity that in his exposé before the Committee he didn't elaborate on his unbelievable views on Israel.

In 2010, he gave an interview titled "It is more than time for Israel to wake up" to the French communist paper L'Humanité. This is how he was introduced: "Rabbi David Meyer holds dual French and Israeli citizenship. He is the author of several books and now lives in Belgium. He has been a committed militant for years and has unrelentlessly denounced the colonization [settlements] which he considers a fault on the part of the Israeli leadership. He has also been a critic of the blockade imposed by Tel Aviv [the capital of Israel!] on the Gaza Strip. He strongly condemns the attack against the peace flotilla off the strip of Palestinian land and calls on the Israeli leadership to "open their eyes" and to come out of their "messianic bubble".

"What is your reaction to last week's tragic events [Turkish flotilla]?
David Meyer: "I find them appalling. And I think that in such circumstances the role of religion is to show to those in one's own camp [the Jews] that they are no longer able to see [i.e. that they are blind]. There in the Jewish world and in Israel an inability to see what it means to put hundreds of thousands of people in prison for years just because they voted for Hamas. This is what Israel is doing in the Gaza strip. It is a sign of absolute failure of Israel vis-à-vis the Palestinian issue. This is very serious. Israeli leaders have no excuses, no mitigating circumstances. You do not kill civilians, especially when you are responsible for the situation created by the blockade. If the Jewish world does not wake up, nothing Jewish will be left in the State of Israel and it will of no interest. Jewish tradition teaches us that man must be able to surpass himself and see the human side even in his enemy and in the friend of his enemy. If the Jews of Israel are no longer capable of this, Israel will not survive. This is my fight and I am determined to continue."

When asked about a European movement JCALL inspired by J Street, Meyer boasts that over the previous decade he has gone much further and said things much harsher about Israel than those contained in the "call" and that he "even said before the last election that one has to become a dissendent on the face of what the State of Israel is becoming. We must call a spade a spade and say that there are moral faults when creating an injustice that is not necessary for one's survival. The colonization [settlements] is not necessary. I signed the petition to express that while showing my commitment to Israel". He complains that religion in Israel has "infected the secular world". And how will the future of Israel unfold? " I have always thought that long-term solution will be a federal and bi-national State, but it should go through a temporary phase of two States, Israel and Palestine. My model is Belgium, where we live together even if we do not like one other. Obviously, what is happening in Belgium is worrying, because if the federal model no longer works here, there is little change it will succeed there." He praises Jimmy Carter and criticises Barack Obama: "An outside power - the United States have the capacity - must force Israel out of its isolation and say, as Carter did in his time: "Enough is enough". I was hoping that Obama would do it, and I do not understand his procrastination."

Sunday, 3 March 2013

It is a pity that the Europeans have not done this type of research themselves. Even the famous tennis stadium Roland Garros in Paris was turned into a provisional camp for the detention of 'undesirable aliens'. Arthur Koestler [photo] was detained there for a week with 500 other European 'undesirables' treated as the 'scum of the earth' and, according to Koestler, compared to other places of detention he experienced it "could almost be called pleasant": "Our grotto, or den, had no windows; our roof was the underside of one of the grandstands, ascending over us in a slope of 45 degrees; our bed was the concrete floor, with a thin layer of straw on it. The straw was damp, as the roof leaked at the junctures of the steps; only half of us had our own blankets and the camp did not provide any; and we lay so closely packed together that many preferred what we called the 'sardine system': head between the two neighbours' feet, in order to avoid mixing the breath." Scum of the Earth, Eland, p.p. 72-73.Eric Lichtblau @ New York Times (The Holocaust Just Got More Shocking)Thirteen years ago, researchers at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum began the grim task of documenting all the ghettos, slave labor sites, concentration camps and killing factories that the Nazis set up throughout Europe. What they have found so far has shocked even scholars steeped in the history of the Holocaust.

The researchers have cataloged some 42,500 Nazi ghettos and camps throughout Europe, spanning German-controlled areas from France to Russia and Germany itself, during Hitler’s reign of brutality from 1933 to 1945.The figure is so staggering that even fellow Holocaust scholars had to make sure they had heard it correctly when the lead researchers previewed their findings at an academic forum in late January at the German Historical Institute in Washington.

“The numbers are so much higher than what we originally thought,”Hartmut Berghoff, director of the institute, said in an interview after learning of the new data. “We knew before how horrible life in the camps and ghettos was,” he said, “but the numbers are unbelievable.”

The documented camps include not only “killing centers” but also thousands of forced labor camps, where prisoners manufactured war supplies; prisoner-of-war camps; sites euphemistically named “care” centers, where pregnant women were forced to have abortions or their babies were killed after birth; and brothels, where women were coerced into having sex with German military personnel.

Beppe Grillo, the comedian turned politician, has just become the leader of Italy's largest party, the "Five Star Movement" in an upset victory. This populist Europhobe got one fourth of the popular votes. He is the idol of Italy's youth. He is the anti-corruption crusader. He is the guru of the Internet.

But Beppe Grillo is also a demagogue with a virulent hatred for Israel and the United States. And his popularity, despite his despicable remarks, shows that the word "Jew" has become an accepted insult once again in Europe's public square.

Mr. Grillo does not hesitate to say that “talk of Israel is a taboo, as is talk of the euro. Just touch it, they will tell you that you are racist and anti-Zionist”. He declared that “all that in Europe we know about Israel and Palestine, is filtered by an international agency called Memri. And behind Memri, there is a former Mossad agent. I have the evidence: Ken Livingstone, the former Mayor of London, has used Arabic texts with independent translations and he discovered a completely different reality". Then he goes on, alluding specifically to a 'Jewish conspiracy' and the need to "check" all information on the Middle East.

Grillo also said that his Iranian father-in-law explained to him that “the translations were not accurate …”, referring to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s expressed desire to erase Israel from the map. According to Grillo, Ahmadinejad’s regime is not like the one described by the Western media: "Those who escape, are opposed to it. But those who remained do not have the same concerns that we have abroad. The economy there is okay, people work. It’s like South America: before it was much worse. I have a cousin who builds highways in Iran". On the executions ordered by Ahmadinejad: "One day I saw a person hanged on a square of Isfahan. I was there. I asked: what is this barbarity? But then I thought of the United States. They too have the death penalty: they put one on adiet, before killing him, because his head is not shrinking. And then: what is more cruel?".

During a show, Mr. Grillo declared: "There is a saying that 'where Attila has passed through, no grass will grow'. We can say 'where the Israelis have passed, no Palestinian will grow''".

Friday, 1 March 2013

Obviously, Erdogan's words are intended to intimidate Europeans - he has told Turkish immigrants in Europe to resist assimilation and has accused German chancellor Angela Merkelof harbouring hatred towards Turks.. At the same time, Turkish Youths Approve of Holocaust on Dutch TV
On a program of the Dutch NTR TV station, a number of Dutch Turkish youths said that they approved of the Holocaust. One of them said, “What Hitler did to the Jews is fine with me.”

VIENNA (EJP)--- Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan [...] told the Global Forum of the UN Alliance of Civilizations (a forum initiated by... Spain) in Vienna that Zionism constitutes a “crime against humanity”.
In an address in Vienna's Hofburg Palace to the fifth meeting of the forum Turkey co-initiated with Spain to "galvanize international action against extremism through the forging of international, intercultural and interreligious dialogue, Erdogan said that whilst “we should be striving to better understand the culture and beliefs of others, instead we see that people act based on prejudice and exclude others and despise them”.

Thursday, 28 February 2013

Source: On a program of the Dutch NTR TV station, a number of Dutch Turkish youths said that they approved of the Holocaust. One of them said, "What Hitler did to the Jews is fine with me".[They should be told what Hitler said about Muslims...]

The Center for the Information and Documentation Israel has called on the Minister of Education to investigate anti-Semitic prejudice among high school students.

An earlier study among Amsterdam high school students showed the existence of much stereotypical prejudice against Jews.

Wednesday, 27 February 2013

"We would like to formally invite you to take part in this historic event. We would also like to seize this opportunity of this letter to ask you, in your position as Nobel Prize winner, President of the State of Israel and someone that has always advocated a just and durable peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians, to free Marwan Barghouti. This would enable him to be in Brussels with us on these two days. Such a gesture from you would certainly be as important as the one F.W de Klerk did with Nelson Mandela in 1991 [this is particularly rich: the kangaroo count has found Israel guilty of the crime of apartheid... and Pierre Galand, who wrote the letter, says that Israel is a "rogue State" - The Russell Tribunal on Palestine dishonours victims of apartheid]. It would also mark a new beginning for Israeli-Palestinian relationships that I am sure will be a revolution in itself." (Pierre Galand)

From Pierre GALAND, General Coordinator of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine (Feb. 20, 2013)

Shimon Peres
President
State of Israel

Dear Mr President,

The Russell Tribunal on Palestine is a people’s initiative whose proceedings were launched in 2009 in response to a call from Ken Coates, Chairman of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, Nurit Peled, Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought 2001, and Leila Shahid [she is the great grand niece of Hitler's friend Hadj Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, and Yassir Arafat's cousin], Ambassador of Palestine to the European Union (EU). The RToP follows on the footsteps of the people’s tribunals established by the philosopher Bertrand Russell on Vietnam (1966-1967) and the Lelio Basso International Foundation for the Rights and Liberation of Peoples of Latin America (1974-1976).

[Interestingly, Bertrand Russell had a poor opinion of Islam: "Bolshevism combines the characteristics of the French Revolution with those of the rise of Islam; and the result is something radically new, which can only be understood by a patient and passionate effort of imagination. [...] Marx has taught that Communism is fatally predestined to come about; this fits in with the Oriental traits in the Russian character, and produces a state of mind not unlike that of the early successors of Mahomet. Opposition is crushed without mercy, and without shrinking from the methods of the Tsarist police, many of whom are still employed at their old work. Since all evils are due to private property, the evils of the Bolshevik régime while it has to fight private property will automatically cease as soon as it has succeeded."]

Noting the failure of third parties to push Israel to respect fundamental international legal norms and to comply with their international obligations, the RToP seeks to contribute to a just resolution of the conflict by mobilizing public opinion, enhancing the role of civil society and providing it with the legal tools it requires to take action.

On March 17, the RToP will convene for its closing session in Brussels. At this event, the members of the Jury will review the findings of the previous four international sessions of the RToP, which highlighted the complicity of third parties (the United States, the European Union, the United Nations, and multinational corporations) in breaches of international law by Israel in Occupied Palestine.

Tuesday, 26 February 2013

"Beppe Grillo has been the success story of the Italian election, with his Five Star Movement becoming the country's single biggest party.

Welcome to the new face of Italian politics – the Five Star Movement, led by mercurial comedian-turned-political activist Beppe Grillo.
His movement's stunning success in Italy's election, becoming the country's single biggest party, is about to propel more than 150 "Grillini" as his supporters are known, into the two houses of parliament.
The movement has won 108 seats in the lower Chamber of Deputies and 54 in the Senate."

Grillo says nasty things about Jews and Israel. In 2001, he called the 1986 Medicine Nobel Prize Rita Levi-Montalcini, who was 91 at the time, an "old whore" and said that her prize had been "bought" by a pharmaceutical company.Europe is looking better and better...

Contemporary commentators often think that the twenty-first-century efforts to prevent or disturb the appearances of Israeli speakers at universities are innovative.

Kraushaar devotes an entire chapter to the experiences of Asher Ben Nathan [photo], the first Israeli ambassador to Germany, at the country’s universities. He was shouted down in June 1969 at Frankfurt University by members of the leftist student group SDS, Palestinians, and leftist Israelis from the Matzpen group. Two days later, Ben Nathan was unable to finish his lecture at Hamburg University because of the many interruptions. When the ambassador wanted to speak in September that year in Berlin, he was told that the climate at both the Free and the Technical universities was such that he should not do so. He then spoke at a meeting organized by the young Christian Democrats. Before the meeting, a leftist publication attacked Ben Nathan in a way that Kraushaar interprets as an invitation to carry out an attempt on the Israeli ambassador’s life. Ben Nathan’s lecture at Munich University in December of that year was also severely disrupted. One poster in the auditorium carried the words: "Only when bombs explode in 50 supermarkets in Israel will there be peace".

There are also other examples besides those Kraushaar mentions of left-wing Germans pioneering extremist actions against Israelis. A case in point is that of Internationale Solidarität, an ad hoc group established to prevent the vice-chancellor of the Hebrew University from addressing a meeting at Kiel University. A leaflet distributed by Internationale Solidarität concluded with the slogan, "Schlagt die Zionisten tot, macht den Nahen Osten rot" (Beat Zionists dead, make the Near East red).[1]

After Ben Nathan ended his ambassadorship, he wrote a book on the letters he had received while in Germany. The German boulevard paper Bild-Zeitung thereupon asked for letters of solidarity with Israel and Ben Nathan. The latter on that occasion also received many anti-Semitic letters, both from the Left and the Right.

An important formative influence on the ideology of many left-wing students was that of the philosophers of the Frankfurt school. One of its prominent members, Theodor W. Adorno, a Jew, wrote a letter in 1969 to his former colleague, Herbert Marcuse, in whose works many of the student leaders of the Paris disturbances sought inspiration. Adorno said he was extremely depressed and afraid that the German student movement would become fascist. He added: "You only have to look into the maniacally frozen eyes of those who probably, basing themselves on us, turn their anger against us". Kraushaar concludes that apparently Adorno at the time did not want to make this letter public.

Sunday, 24 February 2013

The Nazis and their acolytes exterminated 6 million European Jews, including 1.5 million children. After the war surviving Jews did not carry out reprisal actions, no vengeance, no 'suicide bombings'. Surviving Jews either left Europe or stayed and carried on with their lives. Europeans know that and, sadly, knowing this many of them demonise Jews and Israelis in all impunity and with great pleasure.

Yesterday another radical Muslim cell in the UK was found guilty of terrorism offences. Irfan Naseer, Irfan Khalid and Ashik Ali had hoped to carry out a wave of suicide bombings in Britain which would have exceeded 7/7 and rivalled 9/11 in terms of impact and casualties. They were radical Islamists, inspired by radical Islamist preachers and had travelled to Pakistan to receive training in bomb-making with the aim of blowing up British people. [...]

Let us imagine that the cell convicted of attempting to carry out mass murder on the streets of Britain were radical Jews rather than radical Muslims, inspired by Jewish preachers and trained by Jewish terrorist groups in the belief – mistaken or otherwise – that they were acting in the name of their Jewish religion.

Let us furthermore imagine that the recent cell of Jewish terrorists had not only been great admirers of Jewish terrorists who had carried out the largest terrorist attack in history on the United States, and Jewish terrorists who had blown up the London transport system a few years back, but had radical ideological Jewish allies who had done the same thing in Spain, America, India and many other countries around the world over recent years. Imagine, furthermore, that other extremist Jews had assassinated and attempted to assassinate film-makers, artists, writers, politicians and others across Europe over recent years for being critical of Judaism or doing things that they thought offensive to the Jewish faith. Imagine if someone who – because of all of this – had become a critic of some tenets of Judaism had just earlier this month narrowly survived an assassination attempt on him in his home.

Friday, 22 February 2013

Israeli Berlin correspondent Eldad Beck told EJP that he was disgusted with the “overtly anti-Israeli” undertone which Fleifel portrayed in his film because he knew that it would be seen as harmless by the average viewer. What disturbed him most, however, was the lack of sensitivity and judgment which the patrons of the film prize showed. [...] The film's title was inspired by the novel of Palestinian activist Ghassan Kanafani. Kanafani, a former spokesman for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was implicated in the 1972 Lod Airport massacre carried out by members of the Japanese Red Army. 26 people were killed in the attack. (Amazingly the Festival is supported by the International Auschwitz Committee...)Oliver Bradley @ BERLIN (EJP)--- Criticism against Danish-Palestinian film director Mahdi Fleifel is growing after he publicly questioned Israel's legitimacy, only days after receiving the Peace Film Award at the Berlin International Film Festival.
The jury of the Peace Film Award (PFA) honored Fleifel's autobiographical documentary, 'A World Not Ours', for its “social-political and humanistic” background.

Jury-members were impressed with Fleifel's depictions of “hopelessness and isolation... free from the unusual patterns classifying the conflicts between Israelis and Palestinians”.
The jury recognized Fleifel's film as a “plea for a new peace process in the Middle East... at a time where more and more people around the world have to live in refugee camps”.
But the jury members apparently did not listened to the public Q&A sessions which followed the public screenings.
The simplified yet extenuated appraisals which Fleifel projects in his film - implicating Israel with sole responsibility for the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem or lack of any kind of sympathy during his visit Yad Vashem memorial – is tempered through the documentary's tragic yet “heartwarming” humor that could easily win over the hearts of a non-critical moviegoer.

But the ensuing Q&A revealed Fleifel's true intentions of “creating a cliché-ridden narrative”, as one moviegoer put it, “with an overt anti-Israeli sentiment which would have disqualified the film from any sort of peace prize – had the judges remained put for several minutes after the film's screening”.
At the public Q&A Fleifel did not recognize Jewish legitimacy to their biblical homeland. He also made a plea for the right of Palestinian refugees to be able to return within the 1967 borders of Israel.

Thursday, 21 February 2013

France saw an increase of 58 percent in anti-Semitic incidents in 2012 compared to the previous year, according to a report by the French Jewish community. The report released Tuesday by the SPCJ, the security unit of France’s Jewish communities, showed that 614 anti-Semitic acts were documented in the republic last year compared to 389 in 2011.

A fourth of the 96 physical anti-Semitic assaults involved a weapon.
The SPCJ report reflects a near doubling in physical anti-Semitic assaults, of which 57 were documented in 2011.
SPCJ notes two peaks in anti-Semitic attacks in 2012: following the Toulouse shooting, when 90 acts were recorded within 10 days, and after the October 6 bombing of a kosher supermarket in Sarcelles in which two people were lightly wounded, when 28 acts were recorded in the next eight days.

Wednesday, 20 February 2013

Elder of Ziyon: Newest pseudo-academic anti-Israel buzzword: "Spacio-cide"If you need an example of how anti-Israel academics use the veneer of scholarship to target Israel, here's a good one by Sari Hanafi at the American University of Beirut: "This article argues that the Israeli colonial project is ‘spacio-cidal’ (as opposed to genocidal) in that it targets land for the purpose of rendering inevitable the ‘voluntary’ transfer of the Palestinian population primarily by targeting the space upon which the Palestinian people live. The spacio-cide is a deliberate ideology with unified rational, albeit dynamic process because it is in constant interaction with the emerging context and the actions of the Palestinian resistance. By describing and questioning different aspects of the military-judicial-civil apparatuses, this article examines how the realization of the spacio-cidal project becomes possible through a regime that deploys three principles, namely: the principle of colonization, the principle of separation, and the state of exception that mediates between these two seemingly contradictory principles."In summary, Israel is evil, and therefore we must find a way to define everything it does as inherently evil and then explain it afterwards. The author has to admit that Israel isn't engaging in genocide - even academics can only stretch the truth so much - so he has to come up with a new, similarly-evil sounding construct. [...]

In Brussels, the Russell kangaroo tribunal for Palestine will examine the Israel crime of "sociocide". A Belgian psychiatrist Francis Martens devised a few years ago two new expressions to qualify Israel's supposed crimes: "the genocide of consciences" and the "genocide of links" (sociocide?).

Monday, 18 February 2013

Critics claim Romanian writer Paul Goma has practiced Holocaust denial. “Paul Goma’s claims to fame is only by denying the Holocaust, falsifying historical facts and anti-Semitic attacks,”Iosif Belous, vice president of the East European Association of Former Prisoners of Ghettos and Concentration Camps, is quoted as saying on Enews.md, a news site from Moldova.

Belous was reacting to the Union of Moldovan Authors’ nomination of Goma – a Romanian nationalist – to the Nobel Prize in Literature, according to Adevarul, a Bucharest-based daily.
Marco Maximillian Katz, director of the Center for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism in Romania, has written that Goma expressed “ferocious and hateful anti-Semitism” that suggests “Jews are guilty of the Holocaust.”
According to Katz’s analysis of writings by Goma, the Romanian author suggested in the publication Vatra Review in 2002 that the 1940 massacre in Dorohoi in which 53 people were murdered was a retaliation by Romanian troops against Jews and “an answer to aggression, an eye for an eye.” (JTA/Times of Israel)

"Goma’s writings have been branded antisemitic, not least because they identify Jews as the “real” oppressors; culpable for bringing communist rule to Romania. Indeed, the author of a report on the extent of antisemitism in the country published in 2002 commented: “I do not think that there exists, in the production of the cultural post-communist elite, any writings that could be compared with the tireless hate of this former dissident”. Despite such pronouncements Goma has been awarded several civic accolades including honorary citizenship of the town of Timisoara in the west of the country." (REWRITING HISTORY: Holocaust revisionism today, by David Williams)

Sunday, 17 February 2013

Esther, a young religious Israeli, explains why she is putting an end to Islam in Europe, a very successful blog and among the best (12 Aug. 2012):

I've been putting off writing this post, but I can't put this off forever: I'm closing down my blog. This blog has always been a hobby, and as happens in life, I've moved on to other things. I've also discovered that it's not really healthy for me to read thousands of news articles a day and to be aware of every tragedy and scandal across the continent. [...]

I've started this blog in November 2005. I've gotten interested in the subject of the Muslim community in Europe and had been reading other blogs dealing with the issue. At the same time I started learning Dutch with a Flemish friend. A whole new world of news and opinions opened up to me. But what really got me blogging was the realization that the Jewish community was being affected by this very debate, and that nobody else was blogging about that angle. This was brought home to me by the following story: A Dutch author published a thriller centering around a terrorism plot. To add a surprise twist, though Muslims were implicated, the terrorist turned out to be Jewish. That made me realize that Jews were no longer spectators in the game, they were being dragged in.

Suddenly issues like kosher food, circumcision, head coverings, and religious practice were being questioned. The recent German court decision to ban circumcision, followed by similar decisions in Switzerland and Austria, comes as a final note to this blog. I agree with the commentator who wrote that "they've just made Judaism illegal". [...]

1. As mentioned above, the Islam debate has serious implications for the Jewish community, which in my opinion will be worse than Muslim antisemitism. I've blogged about this in the past.
But to emphasize the point: I'm a religious Jew. I cover my hair, I eat kosher food, I don't work on the Sabbath. I do a thousand and one things that I've seen Islam-critics rage against when done by Muslims. Although logically I understand the demand for assimilation, I also know it would means the end of European Judaism. Whether they meant to or not, Europe has put up a big 'not welcome' sign for Jews.

2. Anybody who wants to understand current events, should learn history. The mantra 'Muslims are the new Jews' is usually repeated by people whose knowledge of history starts with the Holocaust. I've also seen Muslims being advised to learn from the Jews how to integrate and be politically active. My advice to European Muslims: pick up a book about Jewish-European history in the 18th-19th century. Jews were finally being recognized as equal citizens, but with the new rights came expectations and obligations. The debate on whether to assimilate, integrate or remain aloof raged within the Jewish community, and has not actually been decided to this day. It revolutionized Judaism, for good and bad. Every topic being discussed today was dealt with then, there's nothing new under the sun. Do people really think there's a quick fix for a problem which has been plaguing an ancient European minority for the past 200 years?

Saturday, 16 February 2013

Tundra Tabloids: The free paper issued to over 360 000 homes by the J. Kärkkäinen supermarket chain, Magneetti Media, has been consistently publishing conspiracy stories for some time now, many of them anti-Semitic. There’s no question about it, J. Kärkkäinen has a "Jew problem" as the following picture from their most recent publication that includes the entire reading of the fraudulent Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, shows. Continue reading. (The Protocolsarticle is taken from the viciously antisemitic blog Radio Islam run by Ahmed Rami, a Moroccan-Swedish writer and Holocaust-denier.)

Belgian Prime Minister Yves Leterme (2008)

"We must be wakeful for a new anti-Semitism, sometimes too easy trivialized. We must be wakeful for a new anti-Zionism that is a hidden anti-Semitism that in reality has not accepted the existence of the state of Israel, even sixty years after its foundation. Europe cannot turn its back on Israel. For Israel is linked to the history of Europe, for more than one reason. We cannot speak about the foundation of the Jewish State without mentioning the Holocaust. There is more, the dream of a new Eretz Yisrael was born in Europe, in the hearts and minds of Theodor Herzl and his followers in the 19th century. And since many centuries, in many thousands of European Jewish households, Pesach, the Jewish feast of Easter, ends with the wish: "Next year in Jerusalem!""..........................................

Charles-Joseph, Prince de Ligne (1801)

"It seems to me that this 1800-year-old anger has lasted long enough."